Doesnt Zalman's Reserator have an optional fan attachment? Could you do a test with that as well?

Althought I would run the system passive.

Hope Zalman included something telling customers never to use straight water when Aluminum and Copper are playmates.

The nautilus is just screaming for some modification. Add a quieter 120MM fan, and an mcu to do some intelligent fan control and you could get the best of both worlds. I may have to add this to my list of summer projects..

I swear I happened on this quite by accident, and if it weren't for the title I'd never have known it was Damage's first heatsink review. How times have changed! BTW, I'm not doing this for the sake of necro comments, just for nostalgia.

http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/3414

its specific heat capacity of 4.184 J/gK is more than four times higher than air's 1.005 J/gK

The specific heat per unit mass isn't a good measure, until you consider the mass of the water and air you plan to use. Water is ~1000x denser than air, so a little water goes a long way.

odd, tigerdirect's stock of the zalman unit says it comes with the northbridge cooler...

request for future articles: include links to manufacturers & products websites

If you did the review in a case, having GPU results on both kits might be worth it to see the effect bringing the heat from the CPU out of the case has on the GPU.

I just signed up today to add my two cents about the Reserator 1 Plus. I'm running one on a 4800+ with two 7800 GTX cards in SLI. It's totally cool and stable at all times and the temps are fine. I don't know why people always say "it's not for a gaming machine, but for a HTPC."

I play Oblivion for hours on end (and BF2), and it's totally rock-solid and absolutely silent. This cooler is the shizzle, as they say these days.

Sure, it's not as cool as a Swiftech kit or something with fans, but the fact that it can cool my CPU and GPUs with no fans is pretty impressive IMO.

Great review... as usual...but...

Needs more pics of reviewer's girlfriends appreciating the Zalman's phallic prowess like last time LOL. That was the sh*t.

The great thing about the Nautilus (for me) is I have a sliding-door closet right next to where I typically put my box. I would just put the nautilus in the closet and that should muffle most of the sound. I'm also looking at that external power supply for the same reason. I don't mind noise, I just want the noise elsewhere. :)

If I'm 'getting my feet wet' then something terribly wrong has happened...

Is there stuff missing after page 3? The transition to page 4 seems rather sudden. (talking about the features of one cooler then going to the other.)

BTW, for the Nautilus, I'd jumper the PSU to get the system primed and leak tested before ever powering up the rig itself.

Did you borrow that blue water from a tampon commercial or from a bottle of Ti-D-Bowl?

Good read indeed. Reserator FTW. Thanks TR.

The reason the cool-down takes so long is that, yes water has great thermal conductivity and pulls the heat away from the CPU very well - you are back to relying on Air's not-so-great thermal conductivity to pull the heat OUT of the WC system (through the radiator). So, long cool-down...

Wasn't that graph at the top of pg 8 superb? a thing of beauty indeed.

nice products too, the only thing that really disappointed me was the noise of the Nautilus, it seems a bit of a shame that it couldnt have similar performance with a less noisey cooler. Ah well, thems the breaks.

I wonder how much that rather closed fangrill on the nautilus500 contributes to the noise, seems awfully designed for a fangrill both in terms of airflow and probably noise from the picture.
I find it odd that that wasn't mentioned in the test.
I guess they know people and know people would drop stuff into the fan if they used a more open design though, however they could have used a vertical fan, but then the whole thing would get rather high with a fan that size I guess.
Another thing I find confusing in the review is that first it says:
"Users can also select a low fan speed setting that dramatically reduces the Nautilus' noise levels at the expense of cooling performance."
and then later you read:
"The unit's low fan speed setting only knocks a couple of decibels off our noise level readings, and the low-frequency hum generated by the cooler is impossible to miss."

Which seems to slightly contradict itself.

Unexpected change of scenery! Much appreciated. I'm off to read.

Yes a good read.

2nd the overclocking tests.

Only gripes about the article is I wish the comparision was more diverse then two water systems. I know Thermaltake, kingwin, gigabyte and vantec all make stand alone coolers to name a few.

Good water cooling system.... good price...but i have no use ;-)

It would have been interesting to see overclocking tests run with each cooler.

Very nice review none the less.

Liking the temperature achieved by the Nautilus. A piece of well placed black duct tape would fix that green light right up.

Hope to see more of this on TR! It would be great to show some of the other options available in the water-cooling scene. All the different parts that make up a waterloop and how do you get it all to fit into a normal case. As case mod’ing sometimes goes hand in hand with water-cooling.

Yay for Canadian coins :wink: